Optimize Your Small Business’ Website
Insights from Product Designer Kalin Wood
In the age of smartphones, information about your local business is no more than a finger tap away for your customers. This makes your local business’ online presence incredibly important — 91% of customers have visited a local business after a positive online experience, like exploring your website!
Designing a website can seem daunting, but if you keep these 4 tips from Product Designer Kalin Wood in mind — it’ll be a breeze!
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and responsive.
About 94% of smartphone owners use their phones to look up websites like yours! Having a website that looks great on mobile will delight customers as they search for your business, making them more likely to pay your spot a visit.
A mobile-friendly site will look great on your customers’ smartphones, will be easy to use, and will load quickly.
If you’re not sure if your website is mobile-friendly, Kalin says to try pulling it up on a smartphone and ask yourself these questions:
Is it loading quickly?
Does it look visually appealing?
Is it easy to use?
If you answer no to any of those questions, you should look into optimizing your website for mobile!
Make your website easy to navigate.
When your current customers or new ones visit your website, you want it to be easy for them to find what they’re looking for. By choosing the sections for your website carefully, you’ll be able to give your customers as great of an experience on your website as you would in your business!
For example — if you’re a restaurant, you’ll want to have a section of your website titled “Menu,” so your customers can easily see what tasty treats you serve.
Regardless of your industry, common website sections are “About,” “Contact,” “Home,” and “Photos.” See what works best for your business!
Keep your website simple.
We know there are a lot of great things about your local business that you want to share on your website, but keeping your website simple will provide your customers the best online experience!
Kalin says to focus on what your want your customers to take away from your website.
Do you want them to make a dinner reservation?
Do you want them to buy an item?
Do you want to encourage customers to drop by your business?
Selecting a focus and a goal for your website will help you keep things simple and clean looking, which is what your customers prefer.
Always ask for feedback.
Building your own website can seem like a huge undertaking, but asking for feedback from your friends, family, and coworkers can make the process much easier.
Kalin says his favorite way to see if the websites he builds are sending the right message, are easy to use, and are visually appealing is to do “The Mom Test” — he asks his mom to take a look at the website and share her thoughts. If there’s something she didn’t understand or didn’t like, Kalin looks at how to improve that part of the site.
By reaching out to other people who have fresh eyes to look at your website, you’ll have new insights that can influence your design and make your new website that best it can be!
Investing the time and energy in building a new website will pay off for your local business. Taking the time to design your website with these four things in mind will help provide a best-in-class experience for your customers online, just like they’d have in-person at your business!
Main Street Hub helps over 8,000 local businesses build and develop a strong online presence. Want to see how we can help your business? Get started with us here!
